by Claire Adams
The bar we went to ended up being fuller that I expected, but then again, it had been a little while since I had been to a bar. It was a pretty popular spot in town, and even though it was a Monday night, there was a moderate crowd. We sat at a booth instead of sitting at the bar so we would be able to talk. We both got beers, Don flirting with the waitress, a cute sandy blonde who blushed every time she passed our booth.
"So, how have you been keeping yourself busy?" I asked him. He was looking past me, checking out our waitress as she walked away.
"Hm? Oh, you know," he said, trying to remember what I had asked him. I had almost forgot how he was always on the lookout for his newest bed warmer. He had a pretty solid yearlong tan, both from working outside and his mom, who had been Sioux Indian. That with his height, body, and the moves he had been practicing since I'd met him meant he was pretty successful with women. "Work. Helping my dad on the ranch. Working my way through this town, one graduating class at a time."
"I thought you'd be done by now," I said.
"Yeah, well, things didn't really work out that way."
"What happened to you playing?"
"I did for a while, but my pops didn't think it was worth it," he said, shrugging. Don had gotten into a Triple A baseball team a while back. He had wanted to work his way up to the pros. The last time we had seen each other, he had still been playing.
"He made you quit?"
"I got sick of his shit. He couldn't shut up about it being a waste of my time."
"But you loved playing. Why didn't you stick it out?"
"Not worth it," he said bitterly. "I was raised for this, you know? It was coming eventually; it was just a matter of when."
"But you don't want it, do you?"
"I'm good at it. I've been doing it my whole life already. Once my dad dies, I'll have to do it, anyway," he said shrugging.
"That sucks. You should still play if it's what you want to do." He shrugged again.
"It's not a big deal. I always knew this was my future. Besides, he sort of had a point."
"How?"
"Working your way up can take years. You basically waste your youth in the minors. It's not even a sure thing."
"He's using you for free labor," I said, drinking my beer. He laughed.
"I live on the land, and all I have to do to get to work is walk out my door," he said, satisfied. I couldn't believe that he was alright with that. There was no problem with that life, but it just didn't make sense to me that he had gotten onto the team, then thrown that away.
We wanted different things, I could respect that. I honestly didn't know what I'd do if I were in his shoes.
"Would you have quit if your dad didn't need you?" I asked.
"I don't know. Maybe. If I hadn't quit then, maybe I'd be doing it now. What about you?"
"What?"
"Your promising future in professional sports," he said, a little sarcastically. "You put down the football and picked up an assault rifle instead." I smirked.
"I didn't quit. I took a sabbatical."
"Too bad. You were good."
"Were? I still am," I said.
"I believe you. Too bad the army got you. You could have gone pro," he said. "Probably would, too. Drafted right out of college." I didn't know why he was talking like all this shit had passed me by already. I was young and uninjured, with practice I'd be able to maintain all my stats, maybe even improve them.
"I'm not retired yet," I said.
"You're gonna try go pro?"
"That was the plan this whole time. It hasn't changed."
"Good luck. If anyone deserves it, you do." I thanked him. "Bet whatever team you got on would just love that they got a vet."
"If I got through boot camp, pro training has nothing on me. I'm doing it, Don. You'll see," I said, believing my own conviction.
"And, you know what that means," he said, taking a swig of his beer.
"What?"
"Women," he announced, smirking. I grunted, taking a drink.
"I don't know, sounds like too much distraction," I said.
"Distraction? You'd say no to easy, free tail?"
"I'm not interested in that, Don."
"Why? You're single, what's the problem?"
"Do you remember Ron?" I asked.
"Ron," he paused, "Veronica? Your ex?" I nodded. I wished he wouldn't call her that, though. It was true, but I was hoping I could change that. "I thought it was over. You told me that broke it off with her. When was that? Last year?"
"We went out Saturday," I said.
"Are you serious? Why the hell would you do that?"
"My sister set us up. I didn't know it was going to be Ron; she didn't know it was going to be me."
"But it's over, right? You're not going back down that road?"
"It was a good road," I said, lightly.
"You can't go into the league with a girlfriend – that shit doesn’t work. With all the girls around, she'll be jealous as hell. Drive you crazy."
"Have you ever met a girl you would stop sleeping around for, Don?"
"Nope. And, I hope I never do. Did you take a couple knocks in the head over in Afghanistan? What happened to you? Don't tell me you're in love with that girl."
"I was when I left."
"Even if it seems like it, Rome, she isn’t the only one."
"I’m not trying to step on your toes," I joked.
"No need to worry about that, either. There's plenty to go around," he said.
We were different in a few ways, but this was the one thing I one hundred percent couldn't relate to. Even before Ron and I had gotten together, hanging out with a bunch of different girls really wasn't my thing. I didn't know how he did it. More was good for him, but I was more than happy with just one. When you find the right one, you don't need to keep looking, I thought.
I had found mine, but we were in a weird place right now. This place where it was like I had lost her, but I had her at the same time. We had breached that first barrier and talked to each other again after the time apart. It was obvious we had things to clear up between us, and I was counting on seeing her again so we could talk.
I didn't tell Don that because he didn't get it. He'd just encourage me that pussy was all the same, and if you fucked the girl from behind, you could pretend you were with anyone you wanted.
I left after one more beer; sandy blonde waitress wouldn't get off for another half hour, and Don decided to wait for her so they could leave together.
That shit was so foreign to me. I hadn't tried to pick a girl up since before Ron and I had gotten together. Even with her, I had had to flirt and get her to like me, but it had been sort of easy. We had been on the same campus every day, not this shit, picking up strangers in bars. If anything, good for him for not going home alone tonight. I knew I was. Maybe this next girl would be the one who locked him down, but I wasn't holding my breath.
I texted Tiffany when I got to my car. She got back to me right away. I went home first, but I was heading out immediately. I had a delivery to make. Meeting people when you were still at school was easy. You kind of had this pool of people that you saw all the time that you could take your pick from; it hadn't been hard shooting my shot with Ron.
Things were different now. I had to try. I knew what I wanted, but I understood her pushback. I had to let her come to me. I had to make it safe again.
Her new place wasn't that far from where her old one had been, same area in town, close to school. She lived two floors up in 3C. I put the box down and walked away. She was probably home. If I tried her door, she would probably open it up. It was tempting, but I had to take a step back and let her do what she needed to do. I walked out of her building and drove home. She'd see it tomorrow morning.
Chapter Twelve
Veronica
I put my purse over my shoulder, looking through it to make sure I had thrown the list of books I needed to get in there. The cheapest one on the list was a cool $200. I only
had to purchase two, the others I could short loan from the library, but textbook costs were no joke. Education costs, in general, were no joke but hey, it was supposed to be an investment, right?
Right.
I had half a mind to buy the books, copy my reading material, then return then to the bookstore when I was done. I walked out the door of my apartment, still rifling through my purse. I stopped when my foot kicked something hard. I looked down, slipping my purse strap back up onto my shoulder. I frowned picking up the box in front of me, looking for a name or apartment number, something that would tell me it wasn't put in front of my door by accident.
There was nothing on it. It wasn't taped up or anything the way boxes came in the mail. I could just lift the lid and see whether there was anything inside it. I mean, it had been on my doorstep, chances were it was for me.
I lifted the lid outside my apartment, just in case. Inside was a single sheet of paper. I took it out, putting the box on the floor. Handwriting in blue ink covered one side of the sheet; a man's writing, if I had to guess – not messy, but not really fine calligraphy, either.
Ron, after all this time, you're still my favorite person to see on a Saturday night. There was something there, and I want to know that you felt it, too. Apologizing for what I did will never be enough. I'll be at our spot every day at noon, ready whenever you are.
It was mine. I knew it was the first word I read. I knew who had sent it, too, even though he hadn't signed his name. I took the box and note inside, leaving them on an end table before heading out again. I didn't want this right now. I was busy. Not only that, I had moved on.
A whole year later after he dumped me for a bullshit reason he could have avoided, and now he wanted to talk. I was pissed getting into my car. It wasn't fair.
Maybe I wasn't as over him as I’d thought that I was since all it had taken to plunge me back into my feelings was him showing up again, but honestly, I had been at least some of the way there. I had made some progress – had started seeing other guys, moved into a new place which he shouldn't have had the address to, gotten my shit together and moved on with my life. This was selfish. He wanted to show up again after a year and act like after what he did, he still had a right to my time.
My annoyance must have been apparent on my face because the man who sold me my textbooks told me to smile, it was summer and a pretty girl like me shouldn't be feeling so down. It wasn't fair. Roman couldn't talk about things like “our spot” anymore. He couldn't drag me back to that place where I had thought everything was good between us because obviously, things hadn't been as good as I had thought.
Peeved, I called Tiffany to see if she was home. I liked living alone but I could see the advantage of staying at home and at times, specifically when rent was due at my place, I envied her a little for staying with her dad.
When I arrived, she yelled at me from inside the house to let myself in. She had been in the kitchen putting groceries away from the shopping trip she had just come home from. I had had breakfast, but I didn't turn down the coffee she offered when she joined me in the living room.
I had never met her mom, but there were signs of her all around the house. Pictures of her on the walls with the rest of the family, carefully placed art and decor that were an obvious woman's touch. Buying a couple ferns for my apartment was cool, but I was looking forward to the day I had a home that I could make into whatever kind of space that I wanted, once I found the right person to share it with.
"Busy morning?" I asked Tiff.
"Dad's got a thing about online shopping. He feels like you have to be in the store to inspect your item before you bring it home," she huffed. She had been trying to get her father to let her get groceries delivered to the house, but he wasn't comfortable with a person he didn't know or trust picking his food out for him.
"Tell him it's just like UPS," I suggested.
"He knows that. He's just stubborn."
"I bet he just does it to make you pay your way," I joked.
"I'd believe that. Neither of us is home most of the day, though, so I guess he sort of has a point, especially when summer session starts up."
"I wish I had been half as dedicated as you when I was a sophomore. Maybe I'd be graduating already."
"Why are you in such a hurry to get out? I think you should enjoy this while it lasts."
"You want me to be paying these loans till I'm eighty?"
"I'm just saying. Once you're out, no more student discounts at the Apple store."
"The student discount at the bookstore today saved me like $20 on a $200 textbook. Bullshit," I complained.
"Textbook? You already went shopping?"
"Just before I came here."
"You didn't wait for me so we could go together?"
"You didn't warn me that I would have to have dinner with my ex after a year of not seeing each other last Saturday, so how about we call it even?" She paused for a second, looking kind of sheepish.
"You're really upset about that, huh?"
"A heads-up would have been nice, that's all I'm saying."
"But would you have gone if I had told you your date was with Roman?" she asked. I thought about it.
"No. I probably wouldn't have gone out for a dinner date with my ex. Met him for coffee at 4 p.m.? Maybe. Had lunch with the two of you and your dad here? Maybe that, too. A date? No. He stopped being that person to me a year ago."
"I'm sorry. I know it wasn't my place."
"You're right, it wasn't."
"Can you stop being mad now?"
"Depends on whether lunch is on you today," I said, smirking.
"Only if you come to the store with me to get my books first," she said, smiling back. I agreed.
The Roman thing was definitely something I wish I had never had to do and something I didn't want to deal with now, but I hadn't seen him since that night. Besides the box at my door, I hadn't heard from him, either. There was enough distance between us still for me to not be mad anymore. As long as she wasn't encouraging him behind my back, I couldn't hold it against her.
A couple hours later, I was scanning a shelf of books with scary-sounding titles. Tiffany was in school for Economics, and I knew nothing about what that meant.
"Can you see it?" she asked. We were looking for The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy by Richard Posner, an additional recommended book on her list; not part of her required reading, but she wanted to get it anyway.
"You could probably check the library for it before spending money," I suggested.
"Got it," she said, pulling the book off the shelf. I wandered through the shelves a little more as she paid for her books. One with a photograph of a red and black bird on the cover caught my eye. I picked it up.
"Birds of the American Southwest," Tiffany read over my shoulder as she came up to me. "When did you pick up birdwatching?"
"Have you ever wanted to go?" I asked her.
"Where? Birdwatching?"
"No. Arizona, New Mexico?"
"Not really," she quipped. "Maybe a little further south to Cabo and then we're talking. Are you getting that?"
"Might come in handy on my road trip."
"You are not doing a road trip to New Mexico on your own. I won't let you."
"If you won't go with me, who the hell am I supposed to take?"
"You're supposed to take a plane and stay at a hotel like a normal person," she said. I smiled, knowing she was just kidding.
"I want to get from coast to coast."
"In that piece of trash car? You won't even get from here to Minneapolis," she joked.
Tiff was a homebody. She had a passport, but wasn't as keen on filling it up as I was. I had been to Mexico and Puerto Rico, but I wanted to see the country before I traveled anywhere else international. The only reason I had seen Mount Rushmore was a field trip during elementary school. If I was going to be a tourist, where was a better place to start than here? The idea for the road trip had started last year because
of the canceled trip to Glacier National Park that Roman and I had been talking about taking.
"You're right. I should probably just hitch," I laughed.
"You really want to end up dead in a psychopath’s trunk, don't you?"
"Maybe one big trip and I'll get it out of my system," I said, putting the book back. I doubted myself as I said it, but I was willing to try it and see whether I could prove myself wrong. What I really wanted to do was relocate, somewhere with a coast; the closer to a beach I was, the better. Maybe I'd end up back here eventually, but not before I had been around for a few years...or many years, we'd see.
"I'd join you if you’d schedule the trip for after my graduation."
"Maybe I can take Sean," I laughed.
"Don't. He sounds like the kind of guy who you'd get into a fight with and he'd leave you on the side of the road," she said. Sean and I had never really fought, we were still too casual for that, but that didn't even really sound that out of character for him. I didn't bother trying to defend him.
"Sounds like solo it is, then."
"Why don't you take..." She stopped herself before she finished her suggestion, but she didn't have to say it for me to know the rest of it. Why don't you take Roman, she wanted to say. We both knew why. I didn't know why she was acting like she didn't. She was supposed to be on my side.
"That everything?" I asked instead, changing the subject. She frowned like she was going to keep going.
"Yeah. Unless you need anything else," she said. Thank God, she wasn't about to push it. I said I was good, too, and we left the store. I didn't have siblings, but Roman and Tiffany had always been close. I adored their relationship, maybe it was a family thing, she had to stick up for him because they were related or something.
There was another one when I got back to my apartment. I picked it up and opened it immediately before I went inside. Same blue ink, same handwriting.
I missed you at the picnic today... Maybe tomorrow?